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“Yeah, I guess,” I said quietly.
“Well, that’s pretty cool, I didn’t really know that nurses specialized.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I didn’t, because it was a common misconception.
“There’s a lot of stuff to learn about a lot of different things. If we focus on one thing, we can become the best in that area.”
“That makes sense,” Julian said, sipping his drink.
The subject of my degree was an awkward one. By now, everyone knew why I was taking it, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“You know she got into nursing because of her mother?” Julian said.
“Yeah, it’s kind of the thing that brought us together,” I muttered.
He fell quiet, and I felt a little guilty at having shut him down so completely when, for whatever reason, he was apparently trying to make amends and be a little kinder to me.
“I got into nursing because of my mother too,” I offered.
“Oh, is she a nurse?” he asked slowly. “Ruth was.”
His voice said he already knew that she wasn’t. When he spoke about his wife, I heard the love for her in his voice, and I wondered how much it had hurt to lose her. Hannah had mentioned that he hadn’t really dated since she passed, and I couldn’t imagine fourteen years like that.
“No,” I said, allowing the words to fall out, “She was a patient at the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.”
“I’m sorry,” Julian said quietly.
I looked up and his eyes were infinitely sad. It made my own walls go back up because I couldn’t stand any sort of pity.
“Don’t be,” I shrugged like it was nothing, “Besides, it’s kind of my fault she died.”
I’d heard those words enough times that I truly believed it.
“How could you think that?” Julian asked.
His hands twitched towards me like they wanted to reach out, but he didn’t. His eyes were almost completely open now, and his body was turned towards me like he was genuinely interested in what I had to say.
“She got the diagnosis when she was only a couple months pregnant with me,” I said, “And all the doctors told her to terminate me and start treatment.” I looked away from Julian’s face because I knew what I’d see there, the same horror in everyone’s face when they heard. “My mom loved me though, and had a bunch of miscarriages before she got pregnant. She called me her ‘rainbow baby’. By the time I was born, things had progressed.”
My memory was flooded with images of my mother. She always said we had the same hair, but since I never saw hers, I couldn’t be sure. She loved my hair, and kept it long so she could braid it and brush it. Sitting on a hospital bed, with the news playing on the TV in the corner, she would comb out my long locks while I sounded out the long names of the drugs dripping into her. She would help me with my math homework—she was a whiz at math.
I felt the tears pop into my eyes and smothered them by remembering everything that came after; the long nights waiting for my father to come home, the smell of alcohol. Sirens blaring, sitting in the front seat of a cop car, crying in a hospital hallway because it was all sounfair. Those memories worked to squash my sadness, and left behind a residue of anger I never thought I’d be able to shake.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Julian said quietly.
He had moved closer to me without my realizing it. Everything in his body language said he felt the same way I did, but I couldn’t help but remember his words from the night after the party. I shuffled over to the next seat so that we were almost right next to each other, and his hands tenderly took mine. They’re warm and dry. I could feel the callus under my thumb where he held pens and pencils, writing and drawing and creating beautiful artwork. I couldn’t look at his face because I knew if I did, I’d see everything I wanted there. I’d see tenderness and affection, and the same damn want that both of us had been suffering with.
“I know it was you,” I almost whispered, “that night.”
Julian’s head dipped and he moved closer. Our foreheads were pressed together, and I could feel every breath reverberating throughout my entire body.
“I was so scared for you,” Julian said, “After that night, that he’d come back and hurt you.”
“He never did.”
“Hannah told me about the nightmares, that you would wake up screaming.”
I blushed but didn’t move my face away from his. This bubble of perfection was too fragile.
